[Question] Is RPG Maker VX Ace worth using?

So unfortunately I don't own RPGM XP. I do own VX Ace, and there is an engine in development called Crystal Engine. Has anybody used this before that can indicate whether it's worth trying to use it or not?

Its not nearly as polished nor has it got the same features as Essentials. I'd rather learn romhacking than try something that doesn't have many essential features.

Ok. Maybe I'll look into romhacking. I used to hack Super Metroid, anyway. >.> It's probably a lot different, though.
What kind of missing features are we talking about?

I think it depends on the kind of game that you want to make. If you want to make something that looks and feels the same as the official Pokemon games, Pokemon Essentials does that the best. If you wanted to perfectly recreate a Pokemon game, for example, I think that would be hard with Crystal Engine, but really easy with Pokemon Essentials. Or if you just want to add a new type and make your game around that, Pokemon Essentials is definitely the way to go.
But if you want to tweak some stuff, then using VX Ace might be easier. If you want to remove the 4 move limit, or make a crafting system, or just... anything that a normal Pokemon game just does not have, then VX Ace probably already has a script for it and you can plug it in. You can mix and match scripts and features.

So, VX Ace and the Crystal Engine are definitely worth using, (and it's free to download the Crystal Engine so there's no harm in playing with it if you already have VX Ace) but it's better suited for... more non-traditional Pokemon fangames, I'd say.

Hm... Yeah, and the more I think about it, rom hacking is probably a little limited in terms of available space, and I'm already familiar with how to use RPG Maker. I guess I'll check out Crystal Engine for now, but I won't start any big project yet. Too bad there is no backwards compatibility with newer versions of RPG maker to use scripts from previous versions :(

I think the only real drawback for VX Ace is the mapping limitations. No layers, terrain tags, and therefore no priority and such. Way harder to make good looking maps and add functions regarding them in the game (checking if a tile is grass or for ledges, etc). Everything else in Ace is an improvement, but the mapping is such a huge drawback that it alone makes XP better imo. Luckily the new version will have these features again, but will also be in JavaScript, so I probably won't be using it.

And I know there's some workarounds for the layers that combine multiple maps together, but that's just hacky and annoying to edit.